The early history of quarantine : origin of sanitary measures directed against yellow fever / by J.M. Eager.

  • J. M. Eager
Date:
1903
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The early history of quarantine : origin of sanitary measures directed against yellow fever / by J.M. Eager. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be transported with the sick to a distant and isolated place. Notwith- standing all this, he does not mention the necessity for purification of infected things nor ever suggest the caution of destroying fomites. There can be no stronger evidence than this of the tenacity with which the physicians of the middle ages adhered to the accepted doctrines of their predecessors. THE BEGINNINGS OF RATIONAL ETIOLOGY, It took centuries of involuntary observation to shake the idea that epidemics are of celestial origin and to be combated by prayers, fast- ing, and processions. The first advances toward broader ideas were not made by medical men. The record of reformed views is found in works on jurisprudence and in the narratives of travelers. In the — books of jurisprudence of the emperors of the East it is noticed that care should be exercised in having relations with persons arriving from places where pest reigns. It was ordered, in consequence, that_ those so exposed should be separated from others for the purpose of observation. The term of forty days (whence the word quarantine) is named, this being the supposed maximum period of the duration of acute maladies. Whether this isolation was practiced in a particu- larly selected piace or in the houses of the suspects is not known. : Merchants traveling in the East and detained at Alexandria or Cairo during the prevalence of .pest observed that cloistered monks did not contract the disease. Many of these merchants, exiled by pestilence, staid constantly within the boundaries of their residences, transacting all business through barred windows and from terraces that crowned the house tops. The stubbornness with which medical men held to the doctrine of aerial corruption of celestial origin is shown by the report made to the Marseille government in 1720 by a body of dis- tinguished physicians, in which the condition of the air was pronounced to be the sole cause of pest, the idea of communicability from man to man being absolutely rejected. One of the most ancient edicts commanding the segregation of suf- ferers from pestilential maladies had for its authors two laymen, Sagacio and Pietro de Gazata, and is found in the chronicles of Reggio d@’Emilia. The document, dated 1374 and written in low Latin, orders that all persons sick with pest be taken outside the city, into the open country, a camp, or the woods, there to remain until dead or cured. The parish priests are required to promptly report all cases of pest under pain of death by fire. After registering these historical facts, the chronicler adds: And I saw in this same year that these orders were observed in Reggio, for which cause all were grieved and terrified more than by the fear of the illness which, when God permits, can not be averted.
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